Honey Boy (2020) - Movie Review

Shia LaBeouf. Actor. Performance artist. Meme in human form. Multidisciplinary plagiarist. Jack of all trades, master of none, not even himself. The man I’ve been calling ‘Shia LaBullshitArtist’ for as long as this blog has existed, out of respect for Daniel Clowes, the Anomalies crew, and pretty much everyone else Shia has ripped off over the course of his career. Is it clear enough yet that I don’t exactly have the highest opinion of this guy as a creative?

Or, at least, I didn’t use to. Between his place as the lead actor in the earlier Michael Bay Transformers movies, the way Hollywood kept trying to push for him as the next big thing with little success, and how much he basically imploded over the course of the 2010’s, he’s pretty much secured his place as everyone’s favourite punching bag. But after seeing him in The Peanut Butter Falcon, in a performance so fucking resonant that articulating my gratitude resulted in some of my best critical work to date, I’m more willing than ever to give the guy his fair due. And once I get into the contents of his latest, hopefully you’ll see why.

The Curse Of The Weeping Woman (2019) - Movie Review

While Marvel and DC continue to hash it out for the place of the kingpin of mainstream superhero cinema, horror has its own monarchy: The Conjuring Universe. Not since the days of Saw consistently blowing up the Halloween schedule has James Wan had this tight of a stranglehold on mainstream horror, having fingerprints on The Conjuring, Annabelle, last year’s The Nun, not to mention outliers like the Insidious series as well as the bane of my existence that is Lights Out. Today’s film technically doesn’t fall under the Conjuring canon, but through a brief inclusion of Annabelle herself, it still has a marked place within it. Think of it as the Redman to the larger universe’s Wu-Tang Clan, or (in more genre-appropriate terms) what The Marked Ones was for Paranormal Activity.